Scott MacLeod
    Theater & Performance Texts

Martin Cox (photo: Steve Finerty)

She Was A Really Big Woman was written for & performed by Martin Cox & Caitlin Morgan at Intersection for the Arts on March 22nd & 23rd, 1986, on the same bill as In The Liberated Zone, script of which follows this.

SHE WAS A REALLY BIG WOMAN

Foghorn. Lighthouse light sweeping in circles through fog. A figure, seen dimly backstage left. Clothed or wrapped in white: bandages or cloth or gauze. Somewhat mummy-like, in a polar way. Feet strapped into snowshoes. Ski-poles dangle uselessly from outstretched arms. Figure struggles to move feet forward slowly through deep, invisible snow. Amplified voice of Woman, middle-aged, pleasant Scots accent, heard, as if from high above upstage right:

She was a big woman, a really big woman. She was forced to purchase big dresses because she was so big. Really big dresses. She couldn’t simply walk into a store, say a haberdasher’s or one of those really big department stores, and order a small dress or a medium-size dress or even a slightly-larger-than-average-size dress, because, you see, it would not go all the way round her very big body. A small or medium or slightly-larger-than-average-size one wouldn’t, that is. She she was forced to purchase a big dress, a really big dress. One that was big enough, so to speak. A big enough dress, that is. If she wished to be clothed, that is. And she certainly did wish to be clothed, as who wouldn’t, I suppose. I mean that I suppose that anyone, even someone without such a big body, would wish to be clothed. And I would suppose that especially someone with such a big body would wish to be clothed.

Her body was really quite big. I mean that everyone had noticed this, not just me. I mean I am not simply making making this up, out of whole cloth, so to speak, but it really is true, she was really quite big, in a bodily sort of way, and it’s not just spite and meanness that’s making me say this. I mean it’s not spite and meanness at all that’s making me say this. That she was so big I mean. Because I’m simply not a spiteful or mean person at all. Not at all, and I’m quite sure that others will agree that I’m not spiteful or mean, just as they will agree, having seen her in the window, that she was a really big woman. Really big. Ever since. And all day in the window sitting and staring out. Sitting in her big black dress and staring out and being stared at. And why not. I mean, every day in the window, staring out. And even seeing just her face. She was so big. And that same big dress every day, all covering her big body. Buried as it were below the frame of the window, below the sill. And her head, her big head, just her big head sticking up above the sill.

It was quite widely and generally known that she was big. Even seeing just her face, it was known she was very big. And in the winter the glass frosted and she seemed to be nothing more than a face, a big face, below the ice. Below the ice on the window, really. Like a face one sees in a mirror, a face not one’s own, seen at an angle. So one’s own face not seen, though it was a mirror one was looking in. Staring out as if she could not see herself in the glass, but staring out perhaps at the village and the grey beach and the boats. But yet staring out as if she could not really see the village or the rest. Staring through the surface of the ice, not seeing herself or the rest.

Man:
Big.

Lighthouse searchlight beam stops sweeping, focusses on Man. Sounds of icebergs creaking. Snow lights.

Woman’s voice:
Yes, she was a big woman, a really big big woman. She was persuaded by the shape of her body to enter a haberdasher’s and order a very big dress, a dress of very large dimensions, in other words. Perhaps black, the color black, black being the color of the dress. Perhaps the black color of the dress was an attempt she made to diminish the size of her body. For if the dress, black, appeared diminished, shrunken like a black shadow into the corners of itself, so too might the size of the body it contained appear diminished as well. So that looking into the wirror at the haberdasher’s she might seem to be of a smaller size than she knew herself to be. Or even while sitting in her chair seeing herself reflected in the glass of the window she stared through. Or not seeing herself. Smaller still. Or the village diminished by the storm, the boats dimished by the weight of the grey.

Man speaks haltingly throughout.

Man:
She was a big woman. A very big woman.

Woman:
Ah, yes, what a big woman she was. Sitting there in the window. Such a big head. Such a big head staring down. Staring at her staring down at the village, such a small village all shrunken under the stare from the window. Though not the village nor the boats nor even the cold beach.

The sound of feet running over stone or loose gravel.

Man:
She was a big woman and she was purchased by a big dress. She was forced. A big dress.

Woman:
A big black dress, black as a night in the arctic-

Man:
I suppose, I mean to say, mean to suppose, a big. A big. She was a big woman.

Woman:
A night with no light of its own at all. But the light beckoning or staring from her window. Her big head then a shadow in the square of lighted window, light like flames behind her head, so dark the house not seen, just the window blazing and the black shadow of her big head, so heavy and big the window seemed about to break.

Man:
Yes, she was a big woman, a really big woman. A big enough woman, so to speak. Her body was big enough, so to speak. In the haberdasher’s. In the mirror. Not the mirror but the dress I mean. Containing her.

Woman:
Yes, yes, now she remembered being told that the surface of the mirror, that is, what made the mirror a mirror was behind the surface of the glass, under the glass, so to speak. But she could never remember this when she was at the haberdasher’s or in the department store. She never remembered to look into the dressing-room mirror while putting on her new black dress. So she could never be sure.

Man:
Not in the mirror, but in the dress, I mean. Her size and the way she contained it.

Woman:
Yes, her large body insulated her. The many layers of herself. The layers between herself and . . . and the rest, I suppose. Between herself and what was big enough to contain her, so to speak. Even in the coldest weather, the dress only. Black only. So carefully chosen to fit. So contained. Everything otherwise out there, recklessly uncovered. She could nearly reach the window from where she sat.

Man:
Big enough, so to speak, big enough.

Woman:
A simple forward lean would do for her hand to touch the window, mere inches, so to speak. Not an effort, really, but a repositioning. A different relationship between her big body and the gravity which clothed it.

Man:
Close enough, so to speak. No, big enough.

Woman:
Sitting close by the impenetrable window. The eyes rooted to the darkness-

Man:
Her black dress-

Woman:
Silence growing like a forest over the ocean-

Man:
She was not like those other foolish women in the haberda-

Woman:
Sitting close. The window. A small piece of the dark forest burning warm behind her, her head a shadow in the window, a shadow rising in front of the flames, shadowed by flames, she thought.
Lights begin to grow imperceptibly darker till full out and dark at end of play.


Man:
She remembered seeing a face in the mirror which was not her own face but a face at an angle, so to speak.

Woman:
The surface of the window like the surface of the frozen sea, her face reflecting oddly, as if on the other side, as if beneath the surface so to speak. But she never remembered.

Man:
She had been told once that the surface lay below, on the other side so to speak, but she could never be sure. Sure enough, so to speak.

Woman:
The fire light and the candle light. And if the ships could be seen through the window they would seem to burn with flame on the surface of the ice. Though at an angle. Seeing the mirror yet not seeing the mirror.

Man:
She was a woman. A big woman. Big enough though she could never be sure.

Woman:
The surface of the mirror like the surface of the frozen ocean, her face reflected in ice but she could swear it was not her face in the ice, in the flames.

Man has by now struggled almost all the way across and down the stage. Here his energy is depleted. He still stands, but there is the sense that he has crumpled or deflated.

Man:
No, she was a big, big, big, big woman.

Woman:
Yes, she was so large sitting there in her window, the light behind her head as if the window aflame and her but a shadow.

Man:
Big. Big.

Lights are now full out, stage is dark.

Woman:
Her body was so large she couldn’t fit all of it through the small window she sat staring through each day. Staring at the empty ocean and the quiet village. The frozen beach without boats.

And in a real fire? She was so big one wondered how she might be carried out, away from the flames.

In the window a tall shadow rising from the reflected flames, seen as if from below the ice. A tall fireman perhaps? Alert, eager for the action, for the rescue? To lift her easily off her feet?

A tall shadow reaching in through ice and flame, defying gravity, lifting her out of her black dress, lifting her up.